


A Storm About To Break

by patster223, TheOxfordEnglishFangeek (jadinacookie)



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, Sexual Content, Trans Character, Winter in Hieron 27 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-13 00:52:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11173581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patster223/pseuds/patster223, https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadinacookie/pseuds/TheOxfordEnglishFangeek
Summary: After everything that happened in The Archives, Fero was done with patterns and he was done with other people making their moves against him.As luck would have it, Throndir was fed up with these things too. It turned out that the two of them fit well together.





	A Storm About To Break

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be a character study where Fero and Throndir talked out their issues, but, as it turns out, we're just *incredibly* thirsty for that Throndir/Fero content. If you want to talk to us (we are always down to chat about team hot vampire cops among other things) we're on tumblr at [patster223](http://patster223.tumblr.com/) and [the-oxford-english-fangeek](http://the-oxford-english-fangeek.tumblr.com/). #getthrondirlaid #someonepleasehelpfero
> 
> Spoilers for everything through episode 27 of Winter in Hieron.

Throndir was a ranger--it was his job to notice what others missed. But Throndir wasn’t sure how _anyone,_ ranger or not, could have missed this new version of Fero Feritas.

Since they last saw each other at Rosemerrow, Fero’s normally brown skin had dulled to a wan tan. His lips were thinner, stretched thin and small, as they all listened to Uklan’s story of Marielda; and his hands no longer flapped with energy, but sat tightly in his lap. Perhaps this more exhausted Fero had awoken in the aftermath of Mother Glory, or perhaps he’d come alive here in the dead stone of The Archives--regardless, Throndir’s stomach twisted with a pang of guilt, knowing that he was partially the cause as well.

Throndir had just been so _startled_ , was the thing. One moment he’d been with _Hieron himself_ in a deserted wood, and the next he'd been thrust into a room not just filled with life, but _teeming_ with it: teeming with the life of Ephrim's fire and Fero's fury. Throndir couldn't help but gasp, reach out with his vampire power, and--just _take_ some of that.

He'd lost control, but there was still time to make it right. During a pause in Uklan’s story, Throndir sat next to Fero in his corner of the room.

"How you holding up?"

Honestly, he wasn’t sure what kind of answer he’d been expecting; one of Fero’s oft-seen, half-cocked grins accompanied by a cheerful assurance perhaps, not that Throndir would have believed it. Or, more likely, a sarcastic retort delivered at a high volume. A disbelieving look at the question even. All of those Throndir was prepared for. 

Fero giving a quiet shake of his head, however, his hands continuing to clench in his lap as a murmur of “I’m not” crossed his lips definitely wasn’t something he had considered.

The honesty, at least, was welcome--one of the things he’d always liked about the halfling was how lacking in pretence Fero was. Sure, he was blunt and frequently obnoxious about it, but Throndir appreciated that he always knew exactly where the lay of the land was with Fero, unlike the rest of their party.

No, what was troubling was how small Fero’s voice sounded--for all his lack of stature, Fero always felt like a large presence. His emotions rang as loud as his voice, impossible to mistake even before Throndir had developed his new...gift.

Now though, Fero seemed to be bottling everything in; pulling himself into a smaller and smaller space like he was trying to keep himself together or disappear completely, and, despite himself, Throndir felt a pang of anger on his friend’s behalf. A pang of _righteousness_.

And then, again, almost as if by _instinct,_ Throndir _reached out_ with that righteousness--with the part of him that made him a member of the Golden Lance--and touched that same righteousness that had always resided inside Fero.

Fero’s response was almost immediate: his body recoiled from Throndir’s, his hands curled into fists, his teeth and lips formed into a snarl as he said, “You know what? Fuck this!”

Everyone but Throndir and Ephrim--who _also_ carried that righteous flame inside him--startled.

“Fuck every single one of you,” Fero erupted, rising to his feet. “You all fucking tortured me and tricked me just so you could do your _stupid_ pattern magic shit, which doesn’t even _work_ by the way-”

“Fero,” Uklan sighed, but Throndir knew better than anyone how futile the effort was. You could not _cage_ someone of the mountains--of the woods--and expect anything but barred teeth.

“No, if your pattern was as grand and elaborate as you say, you wouldn’t need to fucking torture people to get it to work!” Fero said. “It’s stupid magic and this is a stupid place! So fuck The Archives, fuck you guys, and fuck _Lem fucking King_ for acting like I was welcome here in the first place!”

Throndir frowned, the sheer venom in Fero’s voice catching him off guard in a way the anger had not. Beside him, Kodiak let out a low whine of distress. Throndir knew that Fero and Lem had their disagreements, but he had thought the two of them close, the bickering between them that of good friends who spent a lot of time in each other’s company. This however...This went far beyond an argument, beyond hurt feelings and rage. This was a hate in a way Throndir had never heard from the halfling, and it shook him.

He glanced at Ephrim, looking for some kind of confirmation they were both hearing, both seeing the same thing. So often Ephrim’s expression was inscrutable--his features schooled into a mask of disinterest or mild disdain at best--but now his lips were pursed and eyes were sharp as his head bobbed in...agreement? Approval? Understanding even? Throndir wasn’t sure.

“Fero, why don’t we step out for a bit?” Throndir said carefully, wanting to get this situation out of an enclosed room and into a more open space. “Get some air.” 

Fero said nothing, only storming out of the room. His rage left a sickly sweet scent trail, but even without Throndir’s new gifts, Throndir was a _ranger_ \--it was easy for him to follow.

 

***

 

Fero couldn’t keep still, had never been able to keep still. Even before he had learned to shed his shape, he’d shed his movements, his family, his _history_ as if it were his most primal instinct.

Fero thought that that’s why the mountains--why the _gods,_ as it would later turn out--had chosen him as the druid. Contrary to popular belief, the mountains were not merely still stone, but were constantly shifting and groaning to accommodate and accompany new life. They needed someone like Fero: someone who was that change made manifest.

Throndir was chosen too--by what, Fero wasn’t sure, but he could smell it on him, could smell the wild _inside_ him--but, unlike Fero, he was _so_ very still, even as he tracked Fero into the woods. If Fero were not born of these mountains, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to sense Throndir at all.

Fero snarled. He needed to clean the silence of The Archives off of him--he needed to tune into the sounds of the mountains and just be able to _breathe_ , but he couldn’t manage it over the din of Throndir’s _quiet._ Fero shifted from a cougar to a halfling and dropped from a tree, his teeth still barred.

“Why are you so mad ?” Fero asked.

Throndir startled, but it didn’t seem to be at Fero’s entrance so much as it was his choice of words.

“ _I’m_ mad?” Throndir said incredulously. “ _You’re_ the one who just had a screaming match inside The Archives.”

“Well, duh, obviously _I’m_ pissed off; everyone in there is an asshole and deserves it,” Fero said. “But you’re mad and always hiding it. It’s weird.”

Throndir shrugged  "It's...just been a long few days, all right? I got transported here through a broken mirror, for god’s sake."

"Nah, it’s more than that. You're _mad_."

Fero could smell that on him too; he was mad in the same way as Fero was, angry in the way that boiled under your skin at a low simmer until its smell permeated the air around you. He couldn’t remember if Throndir had always been that way, or if this was a recent change.

“What makes you so sure?”

The question came with almost a smirk, a _challenge,_ and Fero smirked right back. Throndir wasn’t like the others; he didn’t ever talk down to Fero like he wasn’t smart enough to understand. He knew the important things like Fero did: could talk to the animals, if not to the stones and trees themselves. He didn’t lie, not like Lem or Adaire, or keep things bottled up inside like Hella. He was honest, and not in the way that Hadrian was, telling the truth because he felt he had to. Throndir just _was_ \--just like Fero.

“Because you smell like a storm about to break,” Fero retorted, tapping his nose conspiratorially.  “Tell me why.”

Throndir’s smile didn’t diminish at the accusation--if anything, it grew.

“That’s...actually a pretty good metaphor,” Throndir said, as if pleased that Fero had found the words for something he hadn’t yet. Despite the snow underneath his feet, a warm buzz fizzled through Fero’s skin. He...wasn’t used to people being pleased with his words.

“Yeah, well, _someone_ in this stupid place has to be good at metaphor,” Fero said, shaking his head. “But, to be honest, I’m kind of sick of them.”

“You and me both.”

“Then be straight with me, man!”

“I want to be, it’s just...kind of hard, with what I am.”

“Oh, what _ever._ If you aren’t going to be, then go away and stop _bullshitting_ me! I can’t deal with any more metaphor or lies or _shit_ anymore, Throndir, I just...I need _someone_ to be real with me,” Fero said, but instead of coming out as a snarl, it came out as half a whimper: an admission of something missing.

“Your lack,” Throndir sighed, as if that was supposed to mean anything to Fero. Then, more gently, he said, “I said it would be hard, Fero, not that I wouldn’t try.”

“Then go ahead. You can’t do worse than everyone else has,” Fero said, exhaustion a crushing weight upon his shoulders as he wondered if his words were even true.

Throndir nodded. “I’ll do my best. Let’s see...uh...I remember you telling me that you first left Rosemerrow because you felt like they weren’t doing the right thing. Maybe you even felt like their actions would be the end of everything--I don’t know. That’s just how I felt when I left home, and Velas too, but...eventually, I just didn’t have the option to leave anymore, Fero. It was taken away from me. Imagine... imagine feeling as angry as you are at Lem, but not being able to run away or turn into a cougar, and instead that anger just--built inside of you.” Throndir placed a hand on his chest, right below his Lance badge. “That’s why I’m a storm about to break. That’s what being in the Lance means.”

Fero’s face screwed up a little as he looked down at the badge and then back at Throndir’s face, trying to follow the line of logic. They’d all been part of the Lance before, albeit as deputies, and the rest of them hadn’t changed. But then again, only Throndir still wore his badge. Fero thought back to what had happened in that room in Rosemerrow--with Solomon and Arrell, and Throndir unconscious on the floor, and the way the room had gone so _cold_ \--and he tried to recall what he had smelled then.

“Doesn’t sound like a great trade off to be honest,” he said with a shrug, still trying to piece together what he could remember as he stepped closer, nose twitching slightly in the hope that he might get something else that way. Something he could make sense of. “I mean, sure, the badge is handy and all, but having to keep everything bottled up...I don’t know. And, I mean, Solomon and Lake, they’re all right, but in the end what did they even do? Who did they really help?”

The figure of Mother Glory loomed large in his memory and Fero felt something in his stomach clench. He shook his head trying to banish the image of her from his mind, his hands balling into fists at his sides.

“They talk about justice and it’s _bullshit_ ,” Fero said. “And you’re saying that’s you now too? What does that even _mean,_ Throndir?”

“It means that I’m done waiting for rogue wizards and corrupt bureaucrats and _librarians_ to be the ones to make a first move!” Throndir said. “I’m making moves of my own now, Fero. What are _you_ doing?”

“ _I_ can’t seem to do anything these days without someone ‘making a move’ that fucks me over!” Fero said. “I’m just trying to save us all from _assholes_ like Lem and Hella who keep moving us toward _that_ -” Fero gestured toward the purple column of the heat and the dark on the horizon “-like I have been _since the beginning,_ by the way, not that anyone fucking gives a shit.”

The breeze picked up around them, as if moving in time with Fero’s breathing. Fero’s chest rose and fell in short, sharp bursts as loose forest debris fluttered around their feet. His fists clenched tighter and instinctively he pulled them up towards his chest.

“ _I_ give a shit Fero,” Throndir shot back, some of that anger finally starting to creep into his voice. Fero felt vindicated as colour blossomed across the ranger’s cheeks, too focused on him to notice the air cooling around them even as the breeze died away. “Which you would know if you paid some _fucking_ attention.”

Fero scoffed. He paid attention just _fine_ \--it was just that he had a lot of things to which to _pay_ attention: the surrounding animals, the spirits of the mountains, his own thoughts, his own dumb _doubts_ and--

Fero pushed that all aside and, for the first time that day, focused all of his senses on Throndir--and couldn’t help but gasp in response to what he saw. Throndir might’ve be a Lance member, but he was first and foremost a _ranger_ , completely tuned in with his quarry: with _Fero_. Throndir’s dark eyes didn’t wander off like Lem’s, but zeroed in on Fero’s every movement; his nostrils flared with Fero’s scent; his body swayed in time with Fero’s own inhales and exhales. Fero took a few steps forward, watching as Throndir’s entire body tracked the movement and shifted to accommodate Fero’s new position.

Only a few feet separated them now. Fero swallowed heavily, and Throndir’s body even reacted to _that_ , his breathing quickening and cheeks flushing. It seemed that everything that Fero did set off a chain reaction in Throndir--and _god,_ what a heady power that was, filling Fero’s stomach with something sweet and hot that Throndir _surely_ \-- _somehow_ \--was able to sense.

Throndir slowly looked Fero up and down and grinned.

“You going to make a move, Fero?”

Fero didn’t reply, his lips twisting into something that was part grin, part snarl as he took half a step back, his weight shifting with it. In less time than it took to take a breath, his form shifted and he sprang forward as a cougar, propelled by powerful back legs, only to shift back into his halfling form a hair’s breadth before claws sank into Throndir’s chest. It did nothing to stop his momentum, however, as he collided with the ranger and sent the two of them toppling backwards into the snow. 

Finally eye level, so close that he could see his reflection in the dark of Throndir’s wide blown pupils, Fero took a deep breath and grinned as the scent of ozone flooded his nose.

“Knew it. Motherfucking storm.” And he pressed his mouth to Throndir’s in an awkward crash of lips and teeth, fingers curling in the front of his leathers as he tugged Throndir closer to him.

 

***

 

Fero Feritas was unpredictable in a way that Throndir hadn’t experienced in a _long_ time. When Throndir had gone after Fero, he’d expected a futile argument in the middle of the woods, not a _kiss,_ not Fero’s rough skin dancing across his own. Throndir might be a storm about to break, but Fero was the whipping sands of a desert, scattered and surprising and _hot_ against everything they touched. He was a force of nature--and _nothing_ was more intoxicating to a ranger.

Throndir bit at Fero’s lip, groaning when Fero gasped into his mouth in return.

“I-I have a house,” Fero said, words stuttering as Throndir pressed kisses across the hot column of his throat. “With a bed. We should do this on a bed.”

“Sure, a bed could work. I love beds. All about them, sleep in them all the time. Well no, that’s not quite true, I spend a lot of time outdoors so usually I don’t sleep in a bed...” He was babbling, he knew he was. But Fero was right there, on his chest and so very _alive_. His pulse was racing beneath Throndir’s lips and he felt drunk on its rhythm.

“Question is,” and Throndir paused to punctuate his statement by biting down on the curve of Fero’s jaw before murmuring next to his ear, “Do you really want to stop this long enough for us to get there?”

“I am a man of infinite patience,” Fero said, voice strained and eyes fluttering shut.

Throndir couldn’t help but giggle into Fero’s throat, though the sound became choked as Fero’s responding growl resonated through Throndir’s body.

“I am!”

“Of course you are,” Throndir breathed, nipping at Fero’s throat, his ear, whatever he could get his hands on with all of these clothes in the way. “That’s why we’re making out on the ground in the middle of the woods. Because of all your patience.”

Fero gave Throndir a feral grin. “Oh, I’ll show you patience.”

With that, Fero’s weight vanished from Throndir’s chest and, in its place, a hummingbird hovered above Throndir’s head, nosing softly at Throndir’s cheek before fluttering away, then coming back and ghosting his feathers against Throndir’s ear before leaving again, giving Throndir only the barest of touches, all the while motioning for Throndir to follow him into the woods.

“Fero,” Throndir whined and heard, in the tongue of a hummingbird, Fero laugh, _patience._ Fero kept whispering it like a promise as Throndir struggled to stand and follow. And yet, despite Fero’s words, his impatience and utter _want_ manifested in ways that even someone who wasn’t Throndir could easily see. Fero shifted form by the second as he lead Throndir into the forest, laughing and unable to stop himself from jumping into Throndir’s arm as a halfling and kissing him before turning into a bird and leading him away again.

Fero Feritas’ entire being--entire _form_ \--was unpredictable: like those shifting desert sands, delighting under the clouds of a storm finally about to break.

Thorondir felt like he was on the edge of breaking too, the last of his patience eroding away as if each beat of Fero’s wings were a wave crashing against the rocky shore of his self control. His blood pounded in his ears and his face felt flushed, almost _burning_ , even as his breath misted in front of him. He wondered if his heart was beating as fast as he was sure Fero’s was. As a hummingbird, Fero was a blur of colour and movement--and yet, attuned to Fero as he was Throndir nonetheless felt like he could pluck the tiny bird out of the air if he'd wanted to end the game right there.

Throndir very much did not want to end it there.

Still, Throndir was thankful when the forest gave way to a rocky outcropping and, with it, the mouth of a cave. Fero flew back towards Throndir like a dart and tugged at one of his curls, wings brushing against the tip of his ear in a way that made him shiver.  Even as a hummingbird, there was no mistaking the giggle his reaction prompted, quickly followed by a teasing whisper of _you gonna catch me?_ Then, Fero flew just ahead and dropped back into his halfling form, smirking as his feet hit the ground and he dashed inside the cave.

“I’ll be right back, Kodiak,” Throndir breathed to the dog at his side, and rushed to follow Fero. By the time Throndir caught up to him, Fero was already sprawled across his bed, clothes thrown off to reveal bare, flushed skin and a straining cock.

Throndir’s mouth watered and he almost drooled as he shucked his own clothing off, unable to stop from circling a hasty finger around his dick as Fero’s eyes grew dark and hungry at the sight of him.

“Hey, hey, I didn’t bring you all the way over to my _comfy_ bed for you to get yourself off,” Fero groaned, motioning for Throndir to come over.

“Whatever happened to patience?” Throndir said, stumbling over himself to join Fero on the bed. He kneeled over Fero, marveling at the bright heat of Fero’s skin, at its pulsing _life_ and _energy:_ a pulse with which Throndir’s felt himself throbbing in time to as Fero leaned up so that his eyes were level with Throndir’s crotch.

“Turns out it’s overrated,” Fero said, before leaning in to lick at Throndir--and maybe Fero was just in tune to Throndir as Throndir was to him, because Fero’s ministrations were somehow perfectly timed to the beat of Throndir’s rushing blood. Each suck corresponded to the rhythm of Throndir’s racing heart, each relentless swipe of his fingers were made _just_ as Throndir was finally about to catch his breath.

Breathing didn’t appear to be a concern for Fero, however, given how his mouth barely left Throndir. Instead, Fero’s mouth on him was a constantly shifting maelstrom of wet pressure, suction, and soft, sweet breaths of cool air that went back to pressure before Throndir even had time to think. For just a moment, he mused if Fero ‘s seeming lack of a need to breathe had something to do with him being so in tune with the elements themselves--like he was a gust of wind himself. Then, however, two quick fingers slid inside him and the ability to think of anything beyond the sensation of them being crooked inside him as Fero’s tongue swirled around his dick was lost.

“Fuck, _Fero,”_ he moaned, his hand tangling in Fero’s hair as the other braced against the slant of the cave roof above them, his hips rocking forward.

Fero leaned into the rocking, but the sharp motion pulled his hair tight across Throndir’s fingers. Instead of flinching at the tug, though, Fero moaned against Throndir’s dick, the sound low and needy.

Throndir’s hips jerked at the fucking _obscene_ sound, but he managed a laugh. “Like that, huh?”

“Oh my god, shut up,” Fero panted, finally starting to seem winded. He spread his tongue slowly across Throndir’s length, his quick breaths soft and teasing against Throndir’s lips as he set an _agonizingly_ slow pace. “Jesus, you taste good.”

“Then maybe you should keep going,” Throndir said, giving another sharp tug at Fero’s hair that pulled a purr and a half-lidded leer out of Fero.

“You telling me what to do now, Throndir?” Fero asked in what might have been considered a sweet way, if the softness in his voice hadn’t been countered by his fingers scissoring open inside Throndir and a third digit joining them, making Throndir gasp. 

“Oh I’d say you know _exactly_ what you’re doing,” Throndir said, feeling more than seeing the smirk that crept across Fero’s face as he pressed his tongue against Throndir once more.

Grip tightening in Fero’s hair, Throndir spread his knees a little wider apart and pressed the halfling further into the mattress, pining Fero down as much as he was getting his own balance. Then, he took his hand from the wall and, reaching back behind him, curled his fingers around Fero’s cock.

The reaction was a gratifying as it was immediate, Fero’s fingers stuttering in their movements and his hips arching up into the contact, as he let out a moan that vibrated through the pair of them and, muffled as it was, managed to bounce around the cave walls.

“Should’ve guessed there’d be no keeping you quiet.”

Fero only made a loud, exaggerated slurping sound against Throndir, which resulted in a half-snort, half-gasp from Throndir that elicited more giggles out of Fero.

“Oh man, you’re fun,” Fero laughed, and then grabbed Throndir’s ass in order to steady himself against Throndir’s dick yet again. Throndir steadied himself too and reached again for Fero’s cock, the heat of it a burning brand in the chill of the room.

When Throndir was out in the woods in the spring, sometimes he would see two birds meeting for the first time: both of them home again after a long winter, strangers who nonetheless recognized their kin, and so danced and flew around each other in a perfect, breakneck time. Not something learned, but something already _known_. Throndir recognized that kinship here too: in the frantic movements of his own hand around Fero’s throbbing length; in the desperate lapping of Fero’s tongue against his dick and his thrusting fingers inside Throndir; in the anger, anger, _anger_ that had pulsed through them and shaped them both from stone and tree until they’d migrated here, _here;_ moving and gasping and thrusting against each other in a fervent rhythm that rang like thunderclaps in Throndir’s bones.

And then Fero’s fingers slid _just_ right and _finally_ the storm broke, Throndir shouting Fero’s name as he came, keening as Fero eagerly licked him clean. Fero’s tongue soon stuttered, however, as Throndir’s hand did not. He managed to steadily pump Fero’s cock until he, too, buckled underneath the building pressure that’d been consuming them both.

It was almost like a shockwave rocked through the whole cave. Fero’s cries echoed off the walls as warmth spilled over Throndir’s fingers and, with it, a surge of energy washed over him too. No, _into_ him. Throndir hadn’t even had to think about it, or pull on it like a loose thread so it would unravel into him. It was like a gift, passing from Fero into him, mixing with the still lingering heat of his orgasm to the point where his whole body felt like it was glowing with light and warmth.

It was enough to make him look down and check that he wasn’t lit up like a fire in a hearth. His head and vision swam little as he swayed in place, head dropping forward only to see his usual complexion, albeit flushed a darker shade of brown, and Fero grinning up at him.

“And you said _I_ was loud,” Fero said, sounding insufferably smug and Throndir couldn’t help but laugh, swinging his leg over Fero to collapse down on the bed beside him.

“An assessment I stand by,” Throndir retorted with a chuckle, relishing in the gasp he was able to wring out of Fero as he ducked his head forward and began licking him clean in turn.

“Good boy,” Fero said, patting his head, and Throndir slapped Fero on the hip.

“I’m not Kodiak, you know.”

“Nah, you’re not nearly as handsome,” Fero said, laughing when Throndir bit his hip in response.

Truthfully, though, Throndir felt too blissed out to take real offense, as his blood still hummed with an afterglow both mundane and vampiric. He lazily mouthed his way up Fero’s body, eventually pressing small kisses to the smooth quartz of Fero’s neck.

Fero hummed happily and met Throndir’s lips in a kiss that grew more intense by the minute, and while Throndir’s stomach fluttered at the chance for another round--

“I can hear Kodiak barking,” Throndir said, pulling away with a sigh. “I think he’s saying that it’s time to go back--he’s probably right, the others are probably wondering where we are.”

“I thought said that you were tired of letting them make the first move,” Fero said. Moving suddenly, he hooked his legs around Throndir and flipped him over, the two of them bouncing against the bed at the impact. “Let them wait.”

And that was a move that Throndir was more than happy to follow along with.

 

***

 

Moving to the mouth of the cave, Fero felt light in a way he hadn’t in...he wasn’t sure how long.  His skin didn’t feel too tight and _wrong_ anymore. Gone was the urge to cast himself out of his body, to let himself be scattered to the winds for a while so he wouldn’t have to _think_.

He grinned to himself as he watched Throndir scratch Kodiak behind the ears, the murmurs of apology at leaving him so long and praise at being such a good boy reaching him even over the whistling wind outside. The smile only widened as the ranger approached and Fero saw that his cloak was hanging somewhat crookedly, caught on one of the straps of his armor. Fero debated with himself for only a moment before reaching forward and tugging it free so it would hang correctly.

“Can’t have you looking anything less than proper when we get back,” he said, looking up at Throndir before shifting into his hummingbird form and fluttering up to perch on his shoulder. _People will think we’ve been up to something._

“Maybe they wouldn’t be mad about it. Who knows, they might need a well-fucked ranger for a pattern,” Throndir said with a grin.

Fero stuck his tongue out so that it flicked Throndir’s neck. _God, probably. But trust me, you don’t want to be a part of their patterns._

Throndir took a finger and ran it gently across Fero’s feathers. “Might be a bit too late for that.”

_Nah. They tried to do that to me and I just escaped! It’s easy, you just-_

“Fero,” Throndir interrupted, though his tone was gentle. “Look at what happened to you when you tried to do that. Hell, look at what’s happened to _all_ of us in the past year. It’s been...it’s been weird. And it’s getting harder to believe that...we’re not all a part of _some_ pattern, even if it’s not the orcs’--even if it’s, I don’t know, just our own.”

Fero shifted into a cat and kneaded his paws into Throndir’s shoulders with a touch more claw than was really warranted before jumping to the ground. _I’m not._

Throndir rubbed his shoulder and gave a small shake of his head. “You know, after today, if that were the case I don’t even know if I’d be surprised.” He reached down to pet the scruff of Fero’s neck, smiling as Fero wound his way between his legs. “So if you don’t want to be a part of their pattern, what are you going to do next?”

Fero didn’t answer at first. He was barely aware of how his tail flicked in agitation as he turned towards toward the column of purple and black that’d taken over the coast and now battled the wall of starlight for dominance over the skyline. Unconsciously, his hackles rose and he sprang up onto Kodiak’s back, wanting the feel of something tangible beneath him as he stared at the absence of anything up ahead.

Fero was someone who wanted who destroy the past. He knew that about himself. But even in his most destructive fantasies, he’d never wanted...this. Destruction was one thing, but it was still a world away from sheer nothingness of the heat and the dark--and yet somehow, for some reason, the universe was dragging him kicking and screaming towards the latter.

Fero closed his eyes against the sight of the purple column. He’d thought he’d known what it meant to be nothing: to turn into sand and be free of a body, to not _be_ anything, at least for a while. But the heat and the dark wasn’t that. Fero had felt what he’d imagined a fraction of it to be when that fucking torturer had ripped a part of him away, leaving a gaping nothingness where _something_ was meant to be. And it had _hurt._ It had hurt _so_ very much to be Nothing...

No. Fero barred his teeth. He was not Nothing, and regardless of what the patterns said, what the universe said, what fucking _Lem King_ said, he wasn’t going to let it take anything else-- _especially_ not with his aid. Because Fero was the opposite of the heat and the dark--he was _life_ . He was the mountains alive and he was going to spit in the face of any Nothing that tried to erase that. _Fuck_ the heat and the dark. Fero Feritas was the life of the soil and the cool stone of the mountains and he had _no_ intention of being anything less.

He turned in a circle on Kodiak’s back and leaped off, a halfling again as he sank a little into the snow. He glanced up at Throndir and offered him a crooked little smile.

“I’m gonna go to the heat and the dark.”

Throndir looked for a moment as if he wanted to argue with Fero, but then he looked the halfling over, and--it was just like it was back in The Archives, except now Fero was aware enough to notice it. _Something_ bright and hot inside of Throndir reached toward another something inside Fero. And, without even meaning to, Fero let that something out, inhaling sharply as his and Throndir’s energies moved around each other as if in cautious recognition--and then, finally, they touched, erupting into a flurry of vivid certainty that made Fero feel as though he could take on any battle, right any wrong.

Fero rubbed his chest and shot Throndir a look. Huh. So that’s what he’d meant by that whole Lance stuff. Weird. And definitely not worth whatever burdens Throndir had described earlier.  And yet, Fero felt all the fuller for it: for being filled with what felt like the exact opposite of Nothingness.

Throndir only nodded to Fero. “Do what you gotta do, Fero. Make your move.”

Fero nodded back and they continued their walk back to The Archives: back to Uklan Tel and the story of a city stuck under the regime of gods, back to the pitter-patter of semioticians trying to fix a pattern that had needed to be thrown away to begin with, back to a place where Fero could finally plan and execute a move of his own.


End file.
